By Trevor Perry

The first debate about presentation material is whether or not to use slide decks. The second debate is then a question of which tool to use.

The answer to the first is…it’s your choice. A slide deck has many advantages, the main benefit being that it is a cheat sheet for yourself. If the slide deck does not represent your message, then it is unnecessary. A slide deck is just one of the tools to support your message – along with your stagecraft, your props, your costume, and your energy.

The answer to the second has two parts. First, the right tool to develop your presentation is the one you are most comfortable with. Second, the tool you should use for an event will normally be decided by their AV team. If you plug in your own device, use your own tool. If the AV team needs your presentation to be on their device, they will need it in a particular format (mostly, of course, this is PowerPoint). If you have not developed your slide deck with their presentation tool, technology is available to convert it for you.

NOTE: Be sure to try your converted slide deck in their tool before you send it in – if you have done something a little fancy in your tool, the conversion may not represent it correctly in theirs.

The third and most important debate is, what should my slides look like? Too often, we are subject to a slide deck from a speaker that causes cognitive disconnect. Here are some questions to consider when building your deck, to improve the experience for you and the audience.

• If you are standing in front of the screen, why do you need a large photo of yourself on your opening or contact slide? Unless your image is your brand, they can see what you look like, and the you in front of them is the most up to date version of you. Are you distracting your audience with too much movement? Transitions, animations, and video are all cool features, but most slide decks include them only because they can. They are, simply, distracting.
• Is the content or the design the most important part of your slide deck? Building a deck from scratch should start with the content, and only when that is filled out should the design process begin.
• Why are you using all those different fonts? Slides should always be readable, and “cool” fonts normally aren’t. And, be aware that a font on your device may not be on the event’s device, which will compromise your design.
• Why are the fonts all different sizes? An example are your slide titles. When they are different word lengths, your tool may “automatically” adjust the font size. When moving from one slide to the next, the audience are subject to a shift in the font pitch of the title on the next slide, causing a momentary subconscious disconnect from the slides, and as a result, from your story.
• Why are there so many colors in your deck? Colors should be based on your branding kit. Choosing a “blue” from the color picker usually results in different “blues” being used in a deck. Knowing the exact color specifications will remove this dissonance.
• Why does the picture look wacky? Stretching an image on one side or another will change the proportions to be skewed out of the original shape. Photos of people should look like themselves, not some fun house mirror version.
• What is all the colored space around the picture on your slide? Dropping an image onto a slide is a basic approach. Usually, this leaves a bunch of space around the image that is plain white or colored, and it looks like something is missing. Keeping the proportions of your image, stretch it to the edges of the slide so it can be seen by everyone in the audience. If there is blank space remaining, change the background of that slide to black – a color that does not show on a screen.

NOTE: The default settings for most slide creation tools cause inconsistency in many ways. Since most speakers have learned these tools on their own, they are unaware of even simple non-default settings that can make the creation process more efficient and the result more stunning.

There is so much more to building slide decks that cannot fit in one article. However, when you learn your presentation tool well, your slide decks will evolve beyond the average.